Deanne Jolly

Interior stylist and writer, Deanne Jolly is renowned for her tenacity and refreshingly honest, straight-shooting personality; which is quite the contrast to her soft, classic and contemporary interior design style.

Without a doubt one of the most talked-about and successful contestants to come out of Channel 9’s franchise The Block, Dea and her former AFL-ruckman husband Darren now manage their own design and construction company D + D Home helping to create beautiful inspiring spaces for their residential and commercial clients. The combination of Dea’s no-nonsense attitude, design instinct and smart and sophisticated design advice has also seen her take on the role as the ‘Style Insider’ columnist for Fairfax’s Domain, along with hosting ‘The Dea Jolly Report’ online video series which saw her critic the winning room of The Block each week.

The record-setting couple appeared on back-to-back seasons of The Block – Glasshouse & Triple Threat, where they had everyone on the edge of their seats when they smashed the price benchmarks and bagged a windfall of almost $1 million, the highest in The Block’s 10 season history. Their luxurious South Yarra apartment, which set itself apart from its competitors with a bright, airy kitchen and large, tropical outdoor courtyard, sold for an astonishing $2.29 million.

Dea’s styling voice was earned long before going toe-to-toe with The Block’s judges on national television, having started out in fashion design where she founded her own fashion label, SOPHIE PENBERTHY showing at Melbourne Fashion Week twice, as well as Sydney Fashion Week.

She then took the leap to interiors and never looked back with seven of her own personal renovation projects under her belt including a 1910 three-bedroom Edwardian home in Melbourne’s Surrey Hills which they sold for $1.753mil, a 28.5% increase on the purchase price and a rundown weatherboard Cape Cod style Flinders Beach House transformation that turned over a 23% sales growth in 18 months. Dea prides herself on “knowing the market, and delivering high quality classic designs that last”.

This ‘Reno Queen’ has big plans for the future in flipping houses and is currently in the final stages on their Kew project affectionately titled ‘The Pavilion’. Taking a derelict 2 bedroom Californian Bungalow infested with rats and possums and turning it into a high end luxury, 4 bedroom contemporary home while still remaining sensitive to its heritage history. The house will be sold at auction in Oct 2016, benchmarked at $3m+, an approx 50% profit margin in under 12 months.